Category: Blog Posts

Hello Internet! I’m going to write a more standard blog post in the next couple of days, but today I want to focus on Net Neutrality, an issue that is especially near and dear to me. It’s likely that you already know what it is, considering that everyone is talking about it right now. But if you don’t, Net Neutrality is a serious of protections that basically keep every site on the Internet more or less equal. Your ISP cannot prioritize one site over another. My blog gets exactly the same treatment as any other site. However, the FCC is voting to repeal Net Neutrality in a couple of days, mostly because ISPs have been campaigning against it. They want to prioritize access to sites that make lucrative deals with them, and sell you certain sites as part of packages, as if it were cable TV.

Naturally, this is really bad for anyone who makes a living on the Internet, which these days is a lot of people. There is no way a site like, say, Topatoco.com can compete with Amazon when it comes to getting the best deal with the most ISPs. In fact, it’s likely that a lot of independent sites could even get blocked, so that ISPs can direct traffic to there preferred partner.

If this upsets you (as it should), you still have a couple of days to act. The vote is on December 14th. As I am writing, it is currently the twelfth. That means you can still call your representative tomorrow, or participate in the internet-wide protest going on right now. Head to battleforthenet.com for more information. And make sure to let your Congressperson know that if the repeal does end up passing, that you will be keeping their actions in mind next year when midterm elections roll around.

I’ve found myself really getting into the Halloween spirit lately. I checked out a horror novel from the library and have been enjoying reading it, and when I’m finished with that I’ve got the digital edition pf The Exorcist on my Kindle. Most importantly, I’ve been working on writing a scary story that I hope to submit to a magazine sometime in the near future. Yes, it’s safe to say I’ve gone head over heels for spookiness this season. But sometimes, when I talk to people, I feel like I’m in the minority this year.

When I’ve talked to people about Halloween and horror lately, I’ve gotten a lot of comments to the tune of “The world’s so scary now, why make it scarier in fiction?” Indeed, there seems to be a lot of people who’s normally be all about the scares but who just can’t seem to get into the spirit right now. And it’s true: the world really is a scary place, especially recently. I can completely understand why someone would not want to be scared this year, or would be having trouble finding the fun in horror. But, somewhat paradoxically, the scariness of the world has made spooky stories all the more fun for me.

See, part of the thing that makes horror fun, at least the horror that I personally like, is that the scary monsters and ghosts aren’t real. Oh sure, they can stand in as metaphors for real things, but they are still impossible beings that only exist in our imagination. And what I’ve found is the more I’m beings scared by these things, the less scared I am about the state of the world. Horror functions as a kind of escapism for me, allowing me to exchange my real life fears for things that are made up. And this is important, because it helps me keep going.

So if you’re having trouble getting into the Halloween spirit, this is my advice to you: find a spooky movie to watch. Make it one of your favorites. Put it on the TV. Turn the lights off. And just focus on the experience for a while. Tune everything out except for the movie. And, just for a little while, stop focusing on the horrors of real life and allow yourself to be terrified by the illusions on the screen.

Hey Internet! Long time no see! How have you been? I’ve been great. And by “great,” I mean, it depends. Some days I’m relatively OK. On others, I have to fight to get myself out of bed at all. My mood has been suffering lately, and if you guess my employment situation had something to do with it, you’d be correct.

When I last wrote on this blog, I had just secured a temporary position as a bookseller in a local community college bookstore. I was originally hired just to help out with the fall rush, but I worked really hard and was eager to please my employers because I thought that they might keep me on as a permanent hire if I did a good enough job. Alas, this was not the case, and so four weeks after starting my job I found myself unemployed once again. Since then I’ve continued to apply to different places, including a greeting card company that is actually looking for a writer (fingers crossed for that one). And now I have retail experience, so I’m a more attractive prospect, especially to bookstores.

I’ve also stopped using Facebook. I’ve had too many stupid arguments about politics on it. Using it has just lead to a lot a frustration and anxiety on my part. A Facebook argument, especially with someone I know in real life, can really exacerbate the symptoms of my mood disorder. So I cut Facebook out of my life (with the exception of auto-sharing my WordPress posts and using messenger on my phone), and I have to tell you, it’s made a huge difference. I feel so much more relaxed knowing that I don’t have to worry about stupid arguments getting out of hand.

What I really haven’t been doing that often, though, is writing. I’ve talked before about being intimidated by the size of the things that I set out to write and how it’s kept me from getting work done on larger projects. Well, lately my mood has been such that even finishing a short story of a couple thousand words has seemed to be too daunting of a task. Luckily, though, I seem to have stumbled on a solution.

A few days ago, I sent the following tweet out to my followers:

I’m still relatively unknown, so here’s an idea: for every like on this tweet, I will write and tweet a microfic.

The stories were surprisingly fun to write. They didn’t take a huge amount of effort on my part, mind you, but they got my mind working and helped me to feel like a writer again. All in all, the thread was a fun little experiment. So I think I’m going to continue tweeting out microfics occasionally. I don’t know if they’ll always be in a thread, but you can definitely expect more coming to you on my twitter feed.

Hopefully I will work my way back up to writing longer things. In the meantime, hit that sidebar link and give me a follow on twitter if you want to see more microfics or even just keep up with what’s going on in my life.

Yesterday as I was exiting the parking lot at my job I hit the curb and blew a hole in my tire. I was coming out of a roundabout that leads away from the campus parking lot and turned to sharply. I felt the car hit the curb for a second, and when it came back down I felt something give and heard a flapping noise. When I eventually turned out into the road, the flapping of the tire became more audible and I cringed. I pulled into the next available parking lot: a small playground next to the community college campus at which I work.

Now, this may come as a shock to you, as this is usually considered one of those things that all adults know how to do, but I have never changed a tire in my life. So, like a boy scout who doesn’t know how to light a fire without hurting himself, I called my dad to see if he could help me out. Just as we had worked out a time after both of our shifts where we could get everything settled, I noticed a sign near where I had parked in a hurry. It read:

Parking for Playground Only
No College Parking
Tow Away Zone

My dad, still on the phone, told me that I should try calling the city police and explaining my situation, because I did not want to have to drive on the rim if I could avoid it. I did so, and the police officers were, fortunately for me, very understanding. I just had to leave a not in case any officers who hadn’t gotten the memo happened by, and I should be safe from having my car towed. I didn’t have any paper on hand, so I tore off part of an old McDonald’s bag and wrote on that.

By the time all of this was finished, my lunch break was already over, I was late getting back, and I hadn’t actually gotten a chance to eat anything. I explained all this to my boss, who was very understanding, and finished off the day, then immediately went back to the spot to find that my dad was already there and that he had already changed the tire. All I had to do was help him load the old tire back into the trunk of my car.

As I was getting ready to leave, my dad told me that I might get an alarm about the pressure in my tire since I was driving on the spare. I nodded and proceeded to drive home. As I was driving the car began to rattle and vibrate and a loud dinging came from the dashboard. I assumed that the dinging was the alarm my dad was talking about, and that the rattling had something to do with the spare tire, so I just took it slow going home and tuned them both out.

When my dad and I got home, my dad told my mom all about the particulars of what had happened while I chowed down on some reheated leftover chicken. Suddenly, my dad gasped and exclaimed “I left the emergency brake on!” I looked up from the drumstick I had been eating, finally realizing that the rattling hadn’t been the tire. I had driven the whole ten miles home with the emergency break on.

Yesterday, the moon blocked out the sun. This event cascaded across the United States, with some areas getting more darkness then others. Historically, eclipses of the sun have been seen as an omen of bad tidings to come. I certainly hope this isn’t the case this time, because yesterday was also the day when I finally managed to land a job.

Yesterday afternoon, my parents and I gathered in our backyard. We each had a simple pinhole camera made from a cereal box, some plain white paper, and aluminum foil. Using these simple tools, we watched as the eclipse reached it’s peak. In each of our devices, a small crescent of light appeared on the paper-lined bottom of the cereal box. It was pretty damn cool. Unfortunately, we weren’t lucky enough to live in one of the parts of the country that got total darkness.

After a while, we figured we had seen the best of what we were going to see, so we went inside and resumed our usual weekday activities, which for me mostly consists of browsing the Internet and filling out job applications. Anyone who has been following my blog consistently knows that I have been unemployed for over a year now. It’s been a frustrating time, as I have run short on cash and had to contend with increased feelings of uselessness and depression. For the most part, I’ve been coping by spending time with friends and playing Dungeons and Dragons. And so, as I was researching paladin builds online, I received a phone call. It was from a local college bookstore that I had interviewed at the previous week asking if I could come in the next day for orientation.

The position is only temporary. It lasts for the first few weeks of the semester as students are coming to pick up there books and supplies. There’s no guarantee of future employment. And yet it is some kind of employment, which means both money and extra experience to put on my resume. Orientation doesn’t begin for a few hours, but already I am wide awake, nervous, and excited. It feels like months of searching have finally started to pay off for real. Here’s hoping that eclipse wasn’t a terrible omen, and that this doesn’t all come crashing down on me.*

So today I was feeling depressed, as I was yesterday, about the state of the world. About how white supremacy continues to be normalized despite the violence in Charlottesville. About how our own president is basically a white supremacist. About how someone could be holding a rally in Cleveland sometime soon and friends of mine could wind up getting hurt, because I know a lot of people who would show up to the counter-protest (note: this isn’t a criticism. You’re all super brave and I love you). About how this could be the beginning, and that my friends of color could be targeted by white supremacist violence. And I was generally feeling powerless.

And then, on my twitter feed, something weird happened. Patrick Rothfuss was tweeting about a Kickstarter he’s promoting, when all of a sudden things got real.

I remember thinking two things. The first was “Aw, Pat, not you, too!” and the second was “Wow. It’s like my thoughts are getting reflected back at me.” Because I had been thinking about similar things. And suddenly, I knew exactly how to respond.

Dude, there is *nothing* wrong with it. Life goes on, even in troubled times. It has to. Otherwise those evil bastards win.

After I had sent the tweets, I looked back at what I had written. And I realized that I had found the words that I needed to hear myself. This was the key to getting myself out of my funk and continuing to live my life. Because to give in is exactly what those people want. They want us to be afraid, to spend our every waking moment terrified that they may be coming to our town next, or that we won’t be able to protect our loved ones. And it’s up to us to prove them wrong.

We have to keep going, because that is how we hold on to what we love. It’s how we keep the dream of beauty and the goodness of humankind alive. We have to keep living our lives and creating beautiful things.

So to Patrick Rothfuss, myself, and to everyone else who may be freaking the hell out right now, I’d just like to say, do your best. Create good work. Raise your kids to be amazing people. Cultivate goodness and beauty in all that you do. Because to do otherwise is to let the fascists win. So promote that Kickstarter, or make that comic, or build your Patreon following, or whatever you need to do. The beauty of human life is that it keeps going, no matter what.

In other words,

Incidentally, this is what the poster was originally referring to, before it became a meme. Let’s bring that meaning back.

I’ll be honest: I’m in a bad state of mind and it’s not getting better. And it’s mainly to do with politics.

Charlottseville shocked me. And had we, as a country, come together to denounce white supremacy, I might have recovered sooner. Instead we got a president who equivocated and a conservative movement that was willing to defend him for doing so. I was amazed by the number of people who tried to tell me the counter-protesters were just as bad as the Nazis, as if that isn’t tantamount to tacitly supporting them. So now I’m scared for our country and questioning my friendships.

Naturally, this is making my depression get really, really bad. Facebook is exacerbating it, but I can’t quit Facebook because I rely on it too much. It’s the main way my D&D group gets in touch. Twitter is better but not perfect, but again there are people who I can only tall to on twitter. Even worse, if I want to grow my blog, one of the best ways to interact with readers is social media.

I am constantly inundated with article after article that makes me question just how selfish and evil and close-minded people can be. I try to get out of it for a few hours but I can’t seem to stay away. I want to be an informed citizen, but I have a hard time feeling like I can do anything. I feel powerless to change the country.

I feel like I’m drowning. This is the worst I’ve felt in a long time. Not even losing my job was this stressful.

Hi. Long time no see. Sorry that I haven’t posted for a while, but WiFi connectivity in my house has been spotty at best. I’m actually typing this out on my phone right now. Please forgive any spelling errors.

Lately I’ve been having trouble writing. I’d call this problem writer’s block, but it’s not really lack of ideas that has been holding me back. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite problem: I have too many ideas and I can’t decide which ones to work on right now.

Now before you go nailing me to a tree for complaining about a “problem” that most writers would kill to have, I should explain a couple of things. First of all, I’m having trouble being confidant that my ideas are good. I’ll start writing a story, hoping it will become a novel, then halfway through the first chapter I become convinced that the whole thing is horrible and I should just give up. In other words, I have imposter syndrome. Secondly, these ideas are huge. Each is way bigger than anything I’ve tried to write before. As a result, I become intimidated by the size of what I’m trying to write and immediately feel inadequate. These two problems combined have made it really hard to get any writing done at all. Luckily I have a solution: stop trying to do too much too soon.

The thing I keep forgetting is that it took years for my favorite authors to get where they are. I’m only twenty-six. I’ve got plenty of time to write. I shouldn’t be so impatient to become a novelist. I’ve got plenty of time to work up to that.

So right now I’m just gonna go back to basics and write a few short stories. Nothing huge. Maybe a couple back stories for my D&D characters.

I’m also tossing around the idea of starting a second blog for discussing/writing about D&D and other tabletop RPGs. Something to help me grow my readership and keep me writing on a regular basis. Also, I can write pages and pages about RPGs. I’ve been a DM for years and a player for even longer. I’ve got loads of opinions and experience to draw from.

Today marks the one year anniversary of the day I lost my job testing software. One year ago today, my manager called me to schedule a meeting. Naturally, I was a little nervous about what it might be about. One of the co-workers who I shared a cubicle with was very nice, though, and she assured me that I did good work and that I probably didn’t have anything to worry about. So I continued working at my desk and tried not to dread the meeting, figuring that there as no point in worrying about it until I knew what it was about.

Imagine my surprise when my manager brings me in to the office of the Vice President of Quality Assurance. Obviously, this was not a normal meeting. To top things off, the representative from HR one who originally interviewed me for my job, was there as well. Consider yourself fortunate, dear reader, that you already know how this ends, and thus are free from the confusion and fear that was gripping me at that moment.

My manager motioned for me to take a seat next to the Vice President while he went and sat on the other side. The Vice President then looked at me and very calmly informed me that they were going to “separate my employment” (their words). To be fair, my manager, the Vice President, and the HR representative were all really nice and cordial about things. My manager even walked me to my car and talked to me to make sure I was going to be OK. This did not stop me from cussing him out on the way home, but it was a nice gesture nonetheless.

I’m celebrating this unfortunate anniversary by doing the same thing I’ve been doing for the last year: by filling out job applications and following up with the places that I’ve already interviewed at. I’m not looking at anything glamorous (and I’m definitely not looking at doing any more software testing), but all the applications I’m filling out are for steady work and that’s really what I need right now, even if it doesn’t pay as much as I would like. Some days are harder than others, but most of the time I’m able to keep my head above water and stay positive. With any luck, this will not only be the first anniversary of my unemployment, it will also be the last.

The Fourth of July is making me feel particularly depressed this year. I try to summon up a little patriotic glee, some good old fashioned “‘Merica!” pride, but all I can think about is how the Republicans are tying to screw me out of healthcare. And then I get worried that I won’t be able to afford my anti-depressants. And then I start to think about what it would be like to to have to live through the Trump presidency without access to anti-depressants, and I get mad and angry and I want to call my Senator and yell at him even though he already said no to the bill. But then I remember that it’s the Fourth of July so he’s out of the office anyway, and then I feel sad and ineffectual.

This is the first fourth of July in my entire memory that I don’t feel like celebrating my country. Even during the last Republican administration, which happened around the time that I first started forming cohesive political opinions, I still wanted to go outside and wave sparklers around and go see fireworks displays. I didn’t like Bush or what he was doing to the country. At all. But he never made me feel depressed the way the current administration does.

I’m clearly in the minority, at least in my White suburban neighborhood, because I can hear people setting off the occasional firecracker outside my house and it’s not even dark out yet. But I bet I’m not the only one feeling this way, because from what my psychologist tells me, anxiety about Trump and the current government is really, really common right now. So if you’re out there feeling alone,. like you’re the only one who can’t seem to muster up good feelings for a country that is continually letting you down, I have this to say: I’m here, too, and I’m just as scared as you. Let’s hide under the covers together.

P.S.: I think I know who to blame for everything that’s going on in politics right now. You see, I was going back over my Facebook time-line and I happened to find this post from a particularly cheeky asshole on the day of the election:

Can you believe this guy? He actually had the nerve to wear a First Order T-Shirt on the day of the election because lol irony lol and now our democracy’s backsliding into a dictatorship. Hey asshole: maybe if you had worn a Resistance T-Shirt, Clinton would have won, yeah? Way to jinx the entire country, jerk. Honestly, the nerve of some people.